The DIP Process

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 22:16:09 UTC, Manu wrote:
> 3. My DIP was rejected
>   a. This is fine, there are valid reasons for this
>   b. The rejection text was *completely* unhelpful, and 75% of 
> it was
> completely wrong
>   c. Despite an incorrect assessment, it was made *very clear* 
> that I
> should start again, submit a new one *on the back of the queue*

This seems an important point: what are the avenues of appeal if 
the decision to reject a DIP is based on problematic reasoning?

It seems very reasonable that rejected DIPs should have one (but 
only one!) automatic "right of appeal" via which the authors can 
respond to the rationale for the rejection, and if needed offer 
potential fixes, and get a reappraisal without having to go all 
the way back to the beginning of the process.  That should reduce 
the scope for rejections based on misunderstandings, 
miscommunications, or trivially fixed flaws, while not overly 
increasing the decision-makers' burden.

This is much more likely to reduce wasted time or demotivation 
than early feedback, because most ideas only reveal their merit 
after thorough investigation -- but it is very frustrating and 
time consuming to have a well-worked-out idea knocked a long way 
back when the concerns may be simple to address.

By the way, that's also something that exists in scientific 
publishing: if the referees have severely misunderstood or 
mis-assessed a piece of work, it's quite normal to request that 
the editor seek a fresh opinion.